Ryoma Echizen's Morning
by BeTrueToThyself
Summary: Another day in the life of. Should be at least mildly amusing, with appearances by Momo, Kikumaru, and Tomo-chan. One-shot. Written for a class.


A/N: I wrote this for my Creative Writing class, so it needed to be intelligible for someone who's never heard of PoT. I hope you like it. The assignment was to write a funny story, but I was grumpy when I wrote this. Can you tell?

A/N #2: Revised! Okay, so I didn't realize that the last version was meant as a rough draft for my class and that I needed a final draft, and so I... well, revised it! Have you ever heard of such a crazy thing? I don't know that I have. :)

**Ryoma Echizen's Morning**

Takeshi Momoshiro yanked the brakes on his bicycle and stomped an impatient foot to the sidewalk. "Echizen!" he bellowed. "Hurry up! We're going to be late for school!"

Soon, a short, bleary-eyed boy creaked open a wooden gate and slowly tottered up to the other junior high student. Exhausted, hazel eyes blinked up through green-highlighted ebony hair. Ryoma Echizen climbed up and plopped sideways onto the bike's rear carrier. The tennis bag/backpack over Momo's shoulder annoyed Ryoma – it was in his way. But he sighed; he had no reason to complain, as he, too, had one.

"You on?" Momo asked with a slightly gentler tone. He peered over his shoulder with deep violet eyes. His short, black hair was spiked up with gel.

Ryoma yawned and nodded. "Mm-hmm." His eyes fluttered closed, but he forced them open again.

"All right, then." With that, Momo pushed off and powered the pedals up and down. It took a moment to gain momentum with the added weight.

He felt the younger boy begin to slump sleepily against his back. He warned with laughter in his voice, "Don't go to sleep, Echizen! You'll fall off."

Ryoma sat up a little then, the Sand Man sprinkled yet more dust over him; he couldn't fight the gentle tyrant and drifted off against Momo's back, propped up by the tennis bag. A small snore lifted into the air. Momo chuckled – more of a rumble in his chest – and shook his head. "That Echizen is always sleeping," he muttered to himself, still furiously pedaling.

When they were about 30 feet from the school's gates, a wonderfully terrible idea popped into Momo's head. He snickered to himself, deciding to do it. He shouted, "Echizen! Wake up!"

Ryoma jerked awake and fell off the bike. He slowly sat up, lifting a confused hand to his head. Blinking around, comprehension and disgust filled his face when he saw Momo waving exuberantly from beside the bike rack. "Come on, Echizen! You'll be late!" the older boy teased, grinning and running off.

Ryoma shot to his feet. "Momo-senpai! **Momo-senpai**!" But he was already long gone. Ryoma muttered angrily to himself while he snatched up his tennis bag.

As he shuffled past the bike rack and through the gates, from his right someone swooped in and attacked him. "O-chibi!" cried a too-happy voice right in his ear. _Not again, _Ryoma groaned in his mind.

Struggling to get free of the all-too-familiar, strangling greeting, Ryoma choked out, "Kikumaru-senpai, let go!"

The older, taller boy picked him up and swung him back and forth like a rag doll. "But I don't want to, O-chibi!" he squealed.

Ryoma demanded, "Stop it! I can't breathe!" Finally, Eiji Kikumaru complied. Ryoma glared up at his beaming tennis teammate.

Kikumaru's reddish-purple hair sprung up and down as he chirped, "Isn't it a beautiful morning?"

Ryoma stared at him. He glanced up. Yep, the dark sky still threatened torrents of rain. He brought his flat, disbelieving gaze back to Kikumaru before simply walking away from the hyper madness. "Hey, O-chibi!" Kikumaru called, confused and a little hurt. "Wait up!" He trotted to catch up.

Then, from Ryoma's left someone else swooped in. "Ryoma-sama!" screeched a shrill female voice. He cringed – but only on the inside. _Not her, too_, he thought. A breathless girl planted herself in his and Kikumaru's path. She thrust a colorful poster into his face. It read, "Good Luck at the Tournament Tomorrow!" There were some sort of pictures on it – caricatures, maybe? Ryoma hoped so, because she always –

"I drew it! Do you like it? See, that's you playing tennis, and that's you afterward when you win, and you drinking soda like you always do, and you… ." Ryoma stopped listening. He brushed past the girl – he still couldn't remember her name.

"Wait, Ryoma-sama!" she shouted. She raced around in front of him again. With a deep, steadying breath, she announced, "I have something to tell you, something I might as well tell you now." He waited, blank-faced. "I want you to go out with me." His face didn't even change. She impatiently waited for an epiphany, a reaction – _something._

But finally he shifted his (wonderfully) intense gaze past her and began to walk again, muttering, "Don't want to."

"What! Why?" demanded a startled Kikumaru.

"It would get in the way of tennis."

The girl gaped at his receding back for a long, rejected moment before she burst into laughter. "Of course! That's my Tennis Prince!" She hollered after him, "I'll still cheer for you tomorrow!" She then, with an odd sort of satisfaction, left a bemused, lonely Kikumaru behind.

Finally, no one bothered Ryoma as he trekked through the school's maze of halls. He made an emergency pit stop at his tiny locker. Spinning the padlock dial right, left, and right again, he tugged at it. It didn't open. He did it again: right, left, right, tug. Again, it didn't open. Ryoma stared at it with bloodshot eyes. The one-minute warning bell rang.

Ryoma knew he didn't have enough time to deal with the blasted thing, so he turned on his heel and stomped down the nearly empty hall, minus his textbooks. Someone ran past, knocking into him. "Oh, sorry, Echizen!" Momo called back, lifting a jovial hand.

Ryoma saw red.

Momo was still looking behind at Ryoma as the older boy barreled into a teacher, bringing them both to the ground. Ryoma smirked a familiar smirk, sweeping past a surprised Momo and the instructor incoherent with shock and anger.

Entering his classroom just as the bell rang, Ryoma's own teacher lifted an eyebrow and called, "Nice of you to join us this morning, Echizen." He paused, reluctantly admitting, "You're actually on time today." Everyone heard the silent reproach, _Though just barely._

Ryoma nodded indifferently to his sensei, heading toward his seat in the back. He slumped in it. The teacher instantly launched into a dull lecture, droning on and on and on about nothing important. That constant hum begged him to fall asleep.

So Ryoma obliged it and dozed off for the second time that morning on his folded arms.

* * *

Please review! I check my email, like, at least once a day for them! I love rave reviews and appreciate constructive criticism - I want to become better. Flames I don't like, but who does? But even if you don't like it, tell me why! Anonymous reviews accepted.


End file.
